I've never had a Steam account or done PC gaming. I have a OLED SteamDeck coming, what do I need to know?
Pretty much title, and looking for game recommendations. I’m hoping I can play Apex Legends and The Finals reasonably well on it. I’m out of cell service frequently so I’m looking for interesting games I can download. I’m mostly a FPS player but do third person for World of Warships on console.
Get a screen protector at minimum. It will help protect against scratches and might save it from a drop.
Get in the habit of zipping your case up when the Deck is inside. If you grab the handle while it’s unzipped, your deck is going to discover why it’s not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop at the end.
If you know you’re unlikely to remember that, get/print yourself a Steam Deck Lifesaver.
Download the free game Aperture Desk Job. It is a great, fun way to get used to the Deck’s controls.
Go into Desktop Mode, go to the Discover store, and download Proton-Up. Get the latest GE Proton from its interface. Steam’s default version is usually fine, but the GE version can sometimes fix compatibility bugs for non-verified games.
To maximize battery, you may need to adjust settings, either in game or via the three-dot-button on your deck.
(Optional) Get some silicone thumbstick covers. Oils from your fingers will wear out the sticks’ rubber eventually.
Personally, I don’t agree. I’ve had a screen protector on my steam deck since I bought mine around a year and a half ago, I can’t say that I’ve noticed any problems with fingerprinting but that type of thing also doesn’t bother me. I’d rather have the increased security of actually having a screen protector on the device so I don’t have to pay for a screen replacement. I have the same attitude towards any device with a touch screen.
But I like matte screens. Yes the colors are worse, but they feel better and have less reflections(the reasons why you tried to avoid screen protectors).
The grease magnet effect is just because the screen protector folks didn’t apply an oleophobic coating. You can buy it and apply it yourself, if it bothers you. Additionally, the oleophobic coating on the Steam Deck will wear out eventually, so you’ll still wind up with grease anyway.
You’ve done nothing to protect against scratches. When the Deck’s screen gets scratched, you’re SoL. Replacing a screen protector is easier and cheaper than the Deck’s bonded screen.
A screen protector can absorb a drop, in much the same way as a crumple zone on a car. The kinetic energy that would crack your screen has a higher chance of being absorbed by the protector, cracking it instead.
Also, just get a cotton microfiber cloth to clean the protector, if you don’t want to be bothered by applying a coating. Most games don’t require touch controls, anyway.
The cost of replacing a whole screen seems like a worse tradeoff than having some oils you can only see when the screen is off.
The vast majority of (visible) scratches come from putting a display in your pocket. Dirt and shit (especially sand. fucking sand) will demolish a screen.
But it is also something where a lot of people are running on decade(s) old information. Even the majority of non-fancy displays are generally at least “tempered glass” and can hold up to most normal wear and tear.
And the Steam Deck has the benefit of (among other things) the sticks being too fragile to just throw it in a bag without the case. So as long as you don’t take the case out at the beach, you are fine and it is protected at almost all times.
That said: I am still a screen protector person. Mostly because it is 10-20 bucks for peace of mind. I have only ever had to replace one once in my entire life but… yeah. But also? My tablet doesn’t have a screen protector (since the vast majority would interfere with stylus responsiveness) and instead relies on a folio cover. And I have zero worries.
I’ll also add that I think the nintendo consoles REALLY fucked people up. I want to say it was the 3ds and everything before it was straight up plastic? And I can’t find anything definitive, but I want to say the switch is also a plastic screen? That is the territory where not trimming your nails regularly enough or picking it up after you had a few crisps can start to cause damage.
The other common argument is it will protect a display in case of a fall. I… mostly call BS on that one. Yes, there are freak occurences where it will land perfectly on its screen on a raised object and cause just enough damage to the screen protector without hurting the display or the device underneath. But a shocking amount of work goes into drop-proofing devices so that your unprotected screen ALSO is very unlikely to crack unless it is falling straight on an exposed metal bolt… at which point your device is likely fucked too. And the extra layer of tempered glass does nothing for a side or corner impact.
Also, the Steam Deck’s analog sticks and the like are far more likely to get damaged than the screen in the case of a “normal” fall.
You may want to check out isthereanydeal.com to build your wishlist. It allows you to set the price thresholds at which you want to be notified and also supports other fully-legitimate (as in devs actively collaborate with them and get paid) stores than just Steam. Many of which sell Steam keys which are codes you can redeem in Steam to activate the game there.
You have all the benefits of Steam games such as no to little extra fiddling to play games on Linux, library and cloud save sync, Steam community and workshop content, playtime tracking etc.
The only real downside is that you’re not covered by Steam’s super lenient refund policy, which is actually quite good to have, since not all games run perfectly on Deck yet. If you buy from other stores, it’s usually hard to refund games that you’ve already redeemed. But if you’re fairly confident that it will run and you won’t refund it, you can sometimes find really good sales “off-season” this way.
Hope that helps :)
If you like FPS games: *Doom Eternal runs fabulously and controls like a dream especially by most FPS thumbstick standards. *Ultrakill falls into that same category *Halo: The Master Chief Collection is great for online *Hypercharge Unboxed is one of my favorite 90’s-style shooters *If you want something less arcadey, Cyberpunk 2077 also runs great and feels great to play *Any of the Half-Life games are an obviously good choice *Left 4 Dead feels great as well All of these FPSes are great offline choices, though some are even better online
If you stick to verified games on Steam, there is little need for tinkering, if at all.
If you do want to tinker, this well is so deep it can become a hobby in and of itself.
As for recommendations for single player games, there are so many and often heavily discounted. Somewhat randomly, I’m going to suggest Prey (FPS, scifi setting) and Sniper Elite 4 (TPS, WW2 setting). Get them on sale !
Note that even though a game isn’t verified, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll need to do any tinkering. You might have to, but it’s not a guarantee or even necessarily incredibly likely.
The only time I’ve had to do eg. configuration file editing was to get Starfield (yes yes I know, shame on me) to run a bit better, but otherwise I haven’t had to do any sort of fuckery to get non-verified games to run.
Something you should know about PC gaming is that there are virtually infinite hardware configurations. And while most games you play will detect your hardware and apply default graphical and frame rate settings, and it’ll be “fine”, it’s usually poorly optimized for highest stability, and with zero respect to battery life.
So, if you want to get higher quality and/or better battery life, you might want to learn how to optimize those.
Steam Deck gives you a nice configurable performance overlay to help.
As someone else mentioned, Humble Bundle. The subscription option (Humble Choice) is a great way to get some game options on your Steam account, as well as a decent discount on all games. Not to mention the Humble Bundles themselves.
In the Steam Store, add all your interests to your wishlist. I’m sure you’ve seen the memes and discussion around the several Steam Sales throughout the year…
For the bundles, buy them for one game you want to try. I bought so many and never played most of the games. 700 games sounds fun till you realise you play the same 10 games on rotation.
Fanatical is also good for bundles. And before buying anything I always check isthereanydeal, but you need to specify that you are looking for steam games on there.
The finals only works on windows, so don’t expect to play that on the pre-installed OS. But keep an eye on steam sales to pick up tons of games on the cheap. Its also a really comfortable system to play some games you might not play on a PC or console. Indie games and the like.
Steam's verification badges are a good starting point for a game's playability. For more information, or to confirm if a game can actually be played when Steam says otherwise, give ProtonDB a look.
Valve has done well at making the Steam Deck a 'play things out of the box' experience but there may be occasions where you'll need to do a bit of tinkering. If that happens there's thankfully a lot of good community resources out there to help you work through it.
Apex Legends’ Anti cheat supports the Steam Deck but The Finals’ devs are still working to support the steam deck on their anticheat so you’ll have to wait to play that game or play it on console
Unless you don't care about audio delay, you'll ideally use a pair that has a low latency mode. I personally can't use any otherwise, and even then the delay is too much for a game such as Hifi Rush.
Bluetooth is fine, haven’t experienced any lag like the other guy said. But remember standard Bluetooth is only two channel, so don’t try to use the microphone on the headphones or your audio will not be stereo.
You can use the headphones for sound then I’m pretty sure there’s a built-in microphone on the deck. For multiplayer game chat.
apex legends works. the finals does not, because of their anti-cheat solution.
for multi-player fps games remember that you’ll play against pc players, they’ll have keyboard and mouse and you won’t have assistance features you might be used to from console fps. Experiment with gyro controls, the touchpads and/or “flick stick” you’ll might find a way to get similar speed and accuracy as a mouse user, but i’d guess you are in for an uphill battle.
have a look at the control schemes provided by the community for games, if you don’t like the default controls.
my competitive fps days are in the past, but i can recommend some single player fps i enjoyed on the deck:
Doom (2016)
Black Mesa, the half-life 1 remake.
Amid Evil
Boltgun
Borderlands 2
e: www.protondb.com to check how various games work on the deck. some games are not “verified” by valve because they only show xbox button prompts, or some “unplayable” games run perfectly fine with a specific launch options
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